


The Universe in my Arms

by glorious_spoon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-11 17:29:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dean keeps his promise. Missing moment from 5.03, Castiel POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Universe in my Arms

**Title:** The Universe in my Arms  
 **Pairing:** Dean/Castiel  
 **Warnings:** Slash.  
 **Spoilers:** General for season 5.  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Summary:** In which Dean keeps his promise. Missing moment from 5.03, Castiel POV.

Dean spends the entire ride back bursting into sporadic fits of mirth, most of which seem to be precipitated by looking over at Castiel. He drums his palms on the steering wheel and sings along loudly and annoyingly off-key to a graphically sexual song on the radio, and halfway through the chorus he starts cackling again and doesn't stop until the song is over. When Castiel asks, he won't explain the joke.

It is irritating, Castiel decides, watching Dean's smirking profile while Dean watches the road. It is coarse, and crude, and _irritating._ And inappropriate. An obscene piece of levity on what should be a solemn occasion.

"You know, I took Sam out to a strip club when he turned eighteen," Dean remarks, out of the blue. "Never saw anybody so uncomfortable in my life." He glances over at Castiel and starts laughing again. "Until tonight. Man. That was _classic."_

"I don't see the humor in the situation," Castiel says sternly.

Unfortunately, sternness is entirely lost on Dean at the best of times. He just shakes his head, smiling at the road unspooling beneath the headlights of the car. "Yeah, Sammy never did either. I swear, you guys are two of a kind."

His expression turns pensive for a moment, and in a flash of illumination, Castiel understands that he is seeing Dean Winchester as his brother saw him; as he might have been were it not for the stains of Alastair and Lilith and Lucifer upon his life. Perhaps it ought to be disappointing, but he feels oddly privileged instead.

Lest the moment become too maudlin, Dean suddenly nods at a young woman standing underneath a streetlamp. The dingy light illuminates her shiny pink dress, which is barely long enough to cover her hips. "Although there still is the issue of you dying a virgin. Think she's your type?"

"I don't have a type," Castiel informs him.

"Sample them all, then," Dean says with irrepressible cheer. "Although, between you and me, I'd stay away from the streetcorner girls. There was this one time in junior year--"

"When you spread a sexually transmitted disease across three states," Castiel finishes for him. "I'm aware."

"Oh, you knew about that?"

"Yes."

"Huh." Dean pulls the car into the back lot, turns off the engine, and sits still, tapping his lower lip thoughtfully. "So what else--you know what? I don't want to know."

***

"If we can't get you laid," Dean says grandly, plunking a coffee mug down in front of him, "we are at the very least going to get you drunk."

Castiel eyes the mug, and the bottle of liquor in Dean's hand, with trepidation. "Dean, I'm not sure--"

"Oh, come on, didn't Jesus turn water into wine?"

He has a point. "One drink," Castiel concedes, then wishes he hadn't when Dean tilts what looks like half of the bottle into his mug. "Dean--"

"Hey, you didn't specify the size of the drink." Dean raises his own mug, beams at him over the rim. "Cheers."

***

He will tell himself afterward that he had no idea what Dean was planning. If he's more honest, he will admit that it's likely _Dean_ didn't really know what he was planning but Castiel, for all his inexperience in walking among the humans, has watched them for millennia. He may not understand them, but he can sometimes predict them, and he knows Dean as well as he knows anyone. Better, perhaps, than he knows himself.

He does not expect to acquiesce.

***

After everything, it is unexpected. One moment he is tasting sweet-burning whiskey on his tongue, watching Dean throw back his head and laugh, watching the way sweat pools in the hollow of his throat, watching the way his eyes crinkle at the corners and the dark fringe of his eyelashes, watching--

\--and then, quite suddenly, Dean is watching him back. Still smiling a loose, easy smile that Castiel has rarely seen on his face, a smile that he recognizes more from Sam Winchester's memories than from his own experience, eyes sleepy and warm, just watching him.

"Hey," Dean says. His voice is sleepy and warm as well. Affectionate. "You drunk yet?"

Castiel considers this, licks the flavor of whiskey from his lips thoughtfully. He doesn't miss the way Dean's eyes follow the gesture. "I don't believe that the liquor is affecting me."

"Huh." Dean rolls his half-empty mug in a slow circle on the table. "Too bad."

He hesitates, a long moment of possibilities that spools out like eternity, and then lifts a hand, very deliberately, and leans across the table to cup Castiel's cheek.

Castiel is innocent, but not as naive as Dean seems to think; even if he were, it would be impossible to mistake the invitation. Dean's hand is warm, heavily calloused, a deceptively fragile web of skin and sinew and bone. His gaze is direct, and time stretches beneath it, contracts, forms a pinpoint of impossible heat.

***

"I don't usually do this," Dean murmurs. It doesn't sound like an excuse; an explanation, perhaps. "With guys, I mean. It's been a while."

It's an understatement. The last time Dean did this was fourteen years ago, and that man was a fat grizzled stranger behind a pizza parlor in Tucson, Arizona. He received sixty dollars for the act. Castiel can feel the phantom pain of the memory and others like it, scars long healed over but not completely faded.

Perhaps he has learned something tonight after all, because he does not broach the subject. Perhaps it is simply that Dean's soul is a latticework of scars, after all, and those are far from the worst of them.

Dean leans across the table, kisses him slowly and deliberately; gentle for all his crude innuendo earlier. Careful. His mouth is soft, and when they break apart Castiel lifts one hand to touch his own lips. He doesn't know what it is about the gesture that makes Dean shake his head and sigh, both affectionate and oddly sad.

"You are so freaking wet behind the ears, you know that? Jesus."

"I am an angel of the Lord," Castiel says, although he doesn't know if that really qualifies as an answer.

"Yeah, I know you are. Which means that this is a whole new level of depraved, even for me." He doesn't take his hand away from Castiel's cheek and there's a smile curled into the corners of his mouth, but his eyes are serious. "You can tell me to stop, you know."

Castiel doesn't.

***

There is only one bed, and it is old and sagging and Castiel can feel the springs against his back when Dean presses him down. The sheets are clean, though, and he spreads his hands against them, palms pressed against the rough fabric.

Dean's mouth is warm and wet against his neck, fingers nimbly undoing his tie, the buttons on his shirt, and Castiel has never felt more anchored in the flesh than he does at this moment. It is both terrifying and oddly exhilarating.

He lifts one hand, tentatively, and presses it against Dean's chest, feeling the heat of skin beneath faded cotton, the steady pulse of his heartbeat. It is not a terribly intimate gesture, but Dean breathes out a low curse and presses his cheek against Castiel's neck. "Fuck. I'm going to hell."

"No," Castiel tells him seriously, and Dean laughs.

"It's just an expression, dude." He pushes Castiel's shirt open and rests the flat of his hand against his belly. "Means I really shouldn't be doing this."

"But you are."

"Yeah, well, I have a long and colorful history of ignoring my better judgment; I'm sure as hell not gonna stop now." He slides his hand over Castiel's hip, grips the curve of it. "Unless you want me to."

Castiel considers this. He considers the smallness and fragility of this form that he inhabits now alone; remembers decades, centuries, millennia spent watching and waiting, never touching. He considers Dean, the scarred and battered strength of his soul wrapped up in the shape of a human man, watching him, and he curves his hand around the back of Dean's head and draws him down for another kiss. "No," he says when they break apart. "I don't want you to stop."

Dean's grin is a sudden flash of sharp teeth and he sits back on his heels, pulls his t-shirt over his head. Muscles shift smoothly under his skin as he tosses it behind him. His body is no longer unmarked beneath his clothes, although the story of his violent life is not written as deeply as it once was. A newly-healed knife wound runs from the top of his shoulder to the middle of his sternum, narrowly missing one nipple. Castiel traces it gently with curious fingers, and Dean hisses like he's been shocked.

Then smiles when Castiel withdraws his hand quickly. "No. It's okay." He closes his eyes briefly when Castiel touches him again, and when he opens them again his pupils are huge and dark inside the green rims of his irises. "Better than okay, actually."

"I see," Castiel says, and thinks, dimly, that he is beginning to.

***

"Why do you want to do this?"

"I told you I wasn't going to let you die a virgin, didn't I?"

"It was a promise made in jest. I wouldn't hold you to it."

"Cas." Dean's voice is rough and his hands tremble slightly against Castiel's skin. "Shut up."

***

Dean is a handsome man, as far as humans measure that sort of thing. Castiel knows this because he sees Dean through the eyes of a human host, though Jimmy Novak no longer shares this form with him. He knows this by the way the other mortals look at him, by the heat in their eyes and their casual unnecessary touches.

To angels, the body is incidental; just a way to lend shape and form to the soul that inhabits it. Castiel looks at Dean and sees a brilliant light filtering through smudged and shattered glass.

It doesn't matter. In the dim lamplight of an abandoned house, Dean is beautiful.


End file.
